Public roads primarily facilitate traffic. Parking is offered as a secondary benefit incident to vehicle throughway. Local governments typically regulate parking on public roads, whether at curbside, in municipal lots, or on other public property, through a regulatory scheme that promotes public safety and provides revenue generation. The impact of regulated control over on-street parking affects all motorists, as well as urban residents, local businesses, commercial drivers, and other parties that use or rely upon on-street parking. Looking for a parking space wastes time and fuel, contributes to traffic congestion, creates frustration and stress, and increases pollution, while disregarding parking regulations can result in parking tickets, fines, and towing. Still, despite these downsides, parking regulation remains a practical necessity.
Commonly, public parking is controlled through parking restrictions and prohibitions that permit parking on a first-come, first-served basis, with few exceptions, such as allowed by special permit. Parking compliance is regulated through a scheme of fees assessed for fixed intervals of time, after which a motorist is expected to either leave or, if permitted, pay for additional time. Public parking is typically purchased using parking meters assigned to individual parking spaces or through nearby curbside pay stations that collect payment and print a receipt, which must be displayed on the vehicle as proof of payment (“pay and display”); collect payment and provide the parking space number or identifier (“pay and no display”); collect payment and provide a license plate number; as well as other methods of associating proof of payment with use of a parking space, including where payment is transacted by phone or online.
Commercial drivers of delivery vehicles are frequently at odds with regulated parking control. These drivers typically need to park near building entrances during business hours to facilitate loading and unloading of goods. As well, each day, commercial drivers must contend with other motorists in navigating city traffic and finding suitable parking spaces, while concurrently attempting to keep their delivery schedule on-time. When parking is unavailable, these drivers sometimes resort to double parking on the street, which in turn causes traffic congestion. Urban transportation authorities attempt to address the problem of parking for commercial deliveries through traffic and parking regulations and enforcement and by designating loading zones for exclusive use by commercial drivers during set times. However, these measures do not adequately resolve the commercial delivery parking problem.
The core problem is resource allocation. From the perspective of commercial delivery companies, loading zones are too few in number and are too often occupied by other non-commercial vehicles. By necessity, delivery companies are forced to treat illegal parking fines as part of the cost of doing business, which in essence institutionalizes the enforcement, infractions, court process, and traffic congestion occasioned by inadequately apportioned loading zones. From the perspective of city planners, allocating more loading zones cuts down on the parking needed for shopping and other commercial purposes. Furthermore, motorists who are ticketed for misuse of loading zones often misunderstand the meaning of posted commercial loading zone restrictions that can vary by day and hour, require commercial plates or licenses, or involve other complex rules of which the motorist may not be aware. In short, crowded loading zones and traffic congestion reflect an inadequate approach to managing loading zones as a scarce public parking resource.
There is a need for more efficiently managing delivery loading zones in a manner that that makes the parking readily available for commercial drivers on an as-needed basis, while also allowing other drivers to park without interfering with the underlying loading zone use.